Rabbit Hole

From government spying to 1969 moon landing, see what celebrities are searching for the ‘truth.’

Courtney Love blessed Twitter with her own Malaysian flight 370 conspiracy theory on Monday, offering a picture of what she alleges to be the Boeing's crash site. While Love didn't succeed in finding the missing plane (though it looks like she found the picture on Reddit), she did successfully join a star-studded pantheon of celebrity conspiracy theorists, with obsessions ranging from government spying to the 1969 American moon landing (or should we say, "alleged" moon landing).

What do Charlie Sheen, Marion Cotillard, and Mos Def have in common? They're all “9/11 Truthers,” aka conspiracy theorists who don't believe the official story of the September 11 attacks.

Sheen believes that former President George W. Bush and his administration orchestrated the attacks in order to justify war with Iraq. He insists that there is a “bottomless warren of unanswered questions surrounding that day and its aftermath.” Sheen has implored President Obama to launch a full scale congressional investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Despite being a grown-up conspiracy theorist, it seems that Charlie couldn't resist running home to daddy with his wacky beliefs. Actor Martin Sheen reportedly began to question his own understanding of 9/11 after learning about his son's conspiracy theories. What will those wacky Sheens think of next!

Marion Cotillard might be a whole lot prettier than Charlie Sheen, but the two actors actually have more in common than you’d think. The Oscar-winning actress faced a barrage of criticism after Truther comments she made during a French television interview surfaced online. Cotillard said, "We see other towers of the same kind being hit by planes, are they burned? There was a tower, I believe it was in Spain, which burned for 24 hours. It never collapsed. None of these towers collapsed. And there [New York], in a few minutes, the whole thing collapsed."

Rapper Mos Def rounds out this famous Truther trio. While he's not the prettiest or the loudest conspiracy theorist in the bunch, he might be the most dedicated: Mos Def has gone so far as to allege that Osama Bin Laden is a total fabrication. In 2007 the rapper went on Real Time with Bill Maher to allege that Bin Laden was just a “boogeyman,” and wasn’t behind the attacks. He insisted, “Highly educated people in all areas of science have spoken on the fishiness around that whole 9/11 theory.” Good point, well made.

Of course, you can’t talk about conspiracy theories without mentioning JFK. A million JFK conspiracists were already hard at work while 9/11 Truther toddlers were still crafting their first tin foil caps. It takes a lot of guts to throw your hat into this serious conspiracy ring—luckily, more than a few celebrities are up to the challenge.

The godfather of JFK celebrity conspiracy theorists is director Oliver Stone. Stone doesn’t just have doubts about the commonly accepted narrative of the JFK assassination—he’s so dubious that he made a whole movie about it. 1991’s JFK presented what Stone describes as a “counter-myth” to the Warren Commission’s “fictional myth.” The movie chronicles the lead-up to the assassination, the murder itself, and an alleged subsequent cover-up. The controversial film came under fire for a myriad of reasons, including its implication that President Lyndon B. Johnson was involved in the cold blooded killing.

Oliver Stone might be the most vocal JFK conspiracy theorist in Hollywood, but he's not the only one. In a 2007 Vanity Fair interview, Bruce Willis admitted, "They still haven't caught the guy that killed Kennedy. I'll get killed for saying this, but I'm pretty sure those guys are still in power, in some form. The entire government of the United States was co-opted. One guy did it? I don't think so.”

Kevin Costner also has a bone to pick with the conventional JFK story (and the CIA. And the Warren Commission. And don't forget the mob!) He believes “There were a lot of people with no love lost for Kennedy — the CIA, the mob. I believe there was a conspiracy …. We've lived with the myth of the Warren Commission (which concluded Oswald was a lone assassin) for a long time.”

Moon landing doubts, much like JFK assassination allegations and 9/11 Truther movements, are the bread and butter of American conspiracy theorists. In 2009, this conspiracy theory found an unlikely celebrity spokeswoman in Whoopi Goldberg, who questioned the circumstances of the moon landing on The View. Following in the footsteps of many moon landing conspiracy theorists before her, Goldberg wondered why the American flag in the video was "rippling" if there was no wind.

In 2005, Spike Lee took what was supposed to be a standard book tour interview on CNN and made it legendary. The director, who was making appearances to promote his new memoir, courted conspiracy controversy when he was asked to comment on recent Hurricane Katrina allegations. According to the CNN interviewer, reports had been circulating among evacuees that the government had orchestrated the flooding of the predominately black and poor ninth ward. Responding to these theories, Lee said, "It's not too far-fetched… I don't put anything past the United States government. I don't find it too far-fetched that they tried to displace all the black people out of New Orleans."

While Spike Lee believes that the government might be messing with our levees, M.I.A has much bigger fish to fry: she thinks Obama's flipping through our Facebooks. She explains, "Everyone on the internet is like, 'Oh my God, come and join Facebook!' They’re all so optimistic… and really, everyone is fucking you up behind the screens. And I don't like that. It makes it difficult for me to interact with my fans knowing that. Google and Facebook were developed by the CIA, and when you're on there, you have to know that." Oh, and "governments can shift their search engines so only what they want you to see comes up." Just FYI.